Bye Hugo :(

After a dinner at Grundtvigs Hus and a group trip to the train station, Mr. Hugo Pilon-Larose is on his way back to Canada.


I know he's one of the few people I know I will see again FOR SURE, but all these goodbyes are creating wierd and unsettling vibes in Arhus-ian air...

Oh, blah.



Hugo - I've told you this story before.

When Rikke first e-mailed us the housing lists and I read all the people who would soon be my classmates, I looked at your name and was like, "Yo. Him and I will be friends." From that day until I left for Denmark, my friends and I always joked about all the partying I would be doing with "Hugo."

Man. This semester we did that and so much MORE!!!

So many dinners - including a "Poor Man's Pudding" baking success - a piano jam, an Oslo adventure, a spring break on Italian look-outs, Spanish steps, and Barca beaches, life chats (especially the one on a bench outside a Church in Arhus) and a life-changing experience in Istanbul.

It all started with a stir fry dinner at Emily's, and a decision to go to Turkey to film a documentary that very night...

I can't believe we did it.

And I can't believe it's over!

Thank you for your patience with my Polanski tendencies, for your sense of humour, and for being a big reason why my 5-month adventure in Denmark was thee best ever.

Love you brotha! SEE YOU IN MONTREAL!!!

"Praying for a Vote"

And now YOU TOO can enjoy some Turkish delight!

...no no, not the edible kind - our Turkey documentary!!!

If you want to see what Hugo, Marieke and I were up to for 10 days in Istanbul, you can clickity-click-click right here!

Şerefe!

But the party don't stop, NO

Today I saw Arhus from the sky!

...or close to it.

Enlight of a school-less reality on foreign soil, and this being Hugo's LAST DAY in Denmark :( , Christina, Hugo, Marieke and I decided to re-visit our inner tourist and go to the Aros Museum!

It was filled with modern neon art messages,

a giant boy sculpture,

and modernism-golden-age-ism-ism-ism paintings,

but the coolest part was definitely the rainbow panoramic look-out on the roof of the museum!







Oh yes. We were faced with a great many examples of modern art today.

A taste of the end, my friend

I say,
Good day,
can you believe it?
It's MAY!
HEY!
Where did the time go so quickly away?
From documentary due day,
it's been a lot of play,
but not all of it happy -
nay -
cuz on Wednesday we had to say,
a goodbye that was heartful,
to Rui from Portugal.



It was a smack in the face,
because in this case,
it reminded me that we're only here
in this place
for a time of great haste...
BUT.
Goodbye's can't erase,
the taste
of Periquita
and dinner dates.


The night before that had been a treat,
we went to meet,
and eat
At Professor Kate's house,
like we did at the start.
Oh man, my heart,
one last time together
before moving apart.

I ain't be deceivin'
people are leavin'!
But you see, there is reason,
it's the end of school's season,
time's not freezin'
but moving ahead,
in a forward rotation,
cuz today was graduation!

After 4 months of class,
we raised up a glass,
and toasted successes and failures
of tasks,
and cast
our editing stress away at last.
But wait -
that was fast!

So hard to imagine
the school part is done,
but hang on -
MORE FUN!
For 2 more weeks I'm staying at Skjholdhoj,
it's gonna be RAD boy,
cuz some others are staying,
and we got bike rides and beach ploys,
JOYS
still to be had,
in Danish spring noise.

AND -
on the 11th of June,
a date that is soon,
I'm taking a flight,
to finish this 5-month adventures off right,
to SLOVAKIA - COOL BEANS!
It's me and Kristine,
and Marieke and Dave and Robert Lundin,
to see Kristin's family and home,
around Bratislava we'll roam,
like it's only February and time's on our side,
and enjoy the ride.



EXCITED am I,
but at the same time, I sigh,
it will mean more goodbye...

But that is for later...

TONIGHT is a party!
Here in my flat,
to celebrate that,
the semester is done,
what FUN
it was,
because,
us TV guys are rad,
no time to be sad!
Just time to enjoy and say "Skol"
with passion from soul,
and heart,

cuz now,

we're together.

Not apart.

One last Turkey tale

Istanbul, Day 5.

Marieke and I were sitting in the small mosque on campus again, hoping to find a girl with a headscarf who was willing to be interviewed on camera.

My phone beeped. It was a text from Hugo:

"The prime minister is here i think!!!"

Our reaction was strangely calm. Maybe it was the silently serene atmosphere of the empty mosque where we were sitting shoeless. But we packed up the camera and start walking to meet him. He was about 20 minutes away from the campus, close to the mosque where we had been filming on Monday when we had our first real Turkish encounter.

As we got closer, we heard music.

There were flags.

We saw crowds of people in the middle of the street.

We started running.

Marieke had the camera bag, and I was running with the camera in my hands and the tripod on my shoulder. Was the prime minister actually HERE?? Were we too late???

Out of nowhere, Hugo appeared beside me.

He took the tripod bag from me: "I'LL TAKE THIS. YOU. GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I RAN.

I didn't know what or why or who or where but the camera was on and I was deep in it.

I FILMED.

My heart was beating SO fast and I laughed and loved it and felt like a journalist.

The prime minister had INDEED been there!!! I saw his car pull away from the mob of people...but the camera missed him. GRRRAHSDH!

Sometime I wish my eyes were the camera. They're always on, so the golden shot would never be missed, and the memory card would never fill up...

But.

As we were filming the crowds of people at this AKP rally, a man appeared from the blur of people and asked Marieke and I inside the building. I thought he was just a random guy interested in our camera. But apparently some people wanted to meet us...

What resulted was Marieke and I sitting beside the AKP candidate himself and being by the surrounding crowd as they took pictures of us sitting beside him.



We were journalists in Turkey, but sometimes we weren't the only ones with questions.

And it was all so mind-bogglingly AWESOME.

Done de Doc

People. May 19th doth be upon us.

Do you know what this means?

.

......

..........

.....

.

THE DOCUMENTARY IS DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh JOYOUS day!!!!!!!!

On the first of May when we left Denmark for Istanbul, I remember longing for this moment of documentaire completion. Thinking about all the filmig and editing and EVERYTHING that we had to accomplish from the 1st to the 19th didn't seem possible, and I thought it would take years before the stress of production would ease.

But as always on this side of the ocean, time flies.

And I would give ANYTHING to do it all over again. AH! Take me back to the platform at Aarhus before this all began!!!!









After more than a month of working with Hugo and Marieke on this final assignment - and after a sleepless, and deliriously fun night at school ALLLLLL night last night - we have brainstormed, researched, traveled, interviewed, researched, filmed, edited, filmed, edited, traveled, brainstormed and edited some more, forming 9 hours of footage into a 12-minute piece on the conflict between religion and secularism in Turkey. CAN YE BELIEVE IT LASS?





















When I get my version up online, I will defs post the link yo.

All we have left of this semester is our exam on Tuesday, so it's truly partay time for the internash TV class. However. I don't think that party planned in the picture above will actually go down tonight. We are all ZONKED to say the least, and some people are STILL at school now finishing up. After 35+ hours with no sleep, I don't think many people will have it in them to party like it's 1999.

So! In that case, I shall keep drinking this Tuborg all on my lonesome (a due date this grand deserves SOME celebtration, yeah?) until Marieke comes in an hour to watch a movie :)

...jeez, you'd think I'd be sick of her after a month of practically living with her.

HA! Totally not. I do believe I have laughed more with Marieke over the past month than some people do in a year. Or more really! Our plan is to watch "500 Days of Summer" and be all zen like it's only February...

Time is going...

Toronto is on the horizon...

But that's for later.

For now, European lovin' under a Danish sun.

YES!